Shhh! The Shady Way To Get One Way Inward Links

Ok so I was recently watching another Matt Cutts video (below) which inspired me to write this post.

We should all know by now that getting inward links to your website can dramatically improve your websites rankings in the search engines.

However, when you exchange links with a website, these days they kinda cancel each other out.

BUT! There is a way to exchange links where your site will get all the credit and the site you link to gets NONE! In other words you’ll get a one way inward link to your website.

Interested?

Thought you might be! All though this is a little sneaky and in some cases it might not be fair on the other person, it’s worth showing you how to do it.

After all, if the other person doesn’t realise what you are doing then thats their own fault for not staying up to date with the ever changing world of the internet and SEO.

OK so here goes…

Follow your normal link exchange procedure whatever that may be. You agree to link to a website and they agree to link to yours.

Let’s say I’m putting a link on my site to widgets.com and they have agreed to link to me.

The html code for the link would normally look like this.

However, if we insert (rel=”nofollow”) into the link code we are telling the search engine spiders not to follow the link.

By doing this you’ll get a genuine link from the website you exchanged with, they will think that you are linking to them, in fact you are. However, you’re getting the credit of an inward link and they are not.

Here’s the video of Matt Cutts talking about no follow links. Notice how he laughs and shy’s away from talking about no follow in link exchanges. However, it does confirm that exchanging links in this way will benefit your site.

So, there you have it. Someone had to let the cat out of the bag!

Keeps safe and please feel free to leave your comments below.
JP

There are many reasons why you might want to consider creating downloadable pdf files for your website visitors.

For instance you could give away an e-book or free report to your newsletter subscribers. PDF files can be downloaded to the visitors computer and can also contain links back to your website. They offer value and help create a professional image.

Here’s my quick step by step guide to making downloadable pdf files for your website.

1) Grab some free software to create your PDF files.

I recommend Bullzip printer you can get it here. Once installed you can simply “print” any document and select the Bullzip printer option. This will then convert your file in to a PDF file and save it on your computer.

Note: When saving your file avoid spaces in the file name. EG my file.pdf should be my-file.pdf or myfile.pdf

2) Upload the PDF file to your website.

You might want to create a directory (folder) on your website for downloads or PDF documents to keep them organised. You can call folder anything you like for example /pdfs/

Use Dreamweaver or your ftp software to upload the pdf file to the directory you have created for your pdf files.

3) Link to the PDF file

You can link to the PDF file from an E-mail or from your Website the link should look like this http://www.yoursite.com/pdfs/my-file.pdf

Note: Many browsers will now open up the PDF file in the browser itself so you might want to consider providing instructions on how to download the file.

EG: Right Click & Select “Save Target As” to Download.

In fact, why not download this post as a PDF?

Right Click On The Download Link Below & Select “Save Target As” or “Save Link As”
Download This Document As A PDF

Please feel free to leave your comments and questions below

JP

I’ve always said that Google doesn’t pay any attention to the meta keyword tag, but now it’s official! watch the video below.

All this said I still believe it’s good practice to use the meta keyword tag to include 3 or 4 keyword phrases. However, do not keyword stuff your keyword tag.

Although Google say they don’t use it for ranking purposes if you’ve got hundreds of keywords in the keyword tag your likely to get penalised in some way.

So my advice! Still use the keywords tag and put 3 or 4 relevant keyword phrases in there. After all it only takes a few seconds to do.

JP

Digg the social bookmarking giant is adding “No Follow” tags to out bound links that it doesn’t trust.

For those that don’t yet know the benefits of Digg here’s how it works.

Each post you publish on your website or blog can be “Dug” at Digg.Com. This is the place where people store, share and comment on links to interesting articles they’ve found on the web.

The major benefit is that with so much fresh information being added to Digg on a minute by minute basis search engine spiders are constantly crawling the site. This meant that by “digging” your own articles and blog posts you could almost instantly direct the search engine spiders to your site for indexing in the search results quickly.

In many tests I have hit the first page of Google with new blog posts in a matter of minutes. However, Digg has now introduced the “No Follow” tag to links it doesn’t trust.

So What Is The “No Follow” Tag?

A standard link in html code would appear as:

<a href="linkpage.html">Link Text</a>

When a search engine spider crawls a website and comes to a link the one above it will follow the link and then crawl the page that it links to.

However with the “No Follow” tag added to the code…

<a href="linkpage.html" rel=“nofollow”>Link Text</a>

…the search engine spider will simply pass by the link.

The links still works from a users perspective but as far as the search engines go, no spiders will crawl your page and page rank doesn’t flow through a no follow tag.

The idea is that spammers will get no credit from no follow links and stop using sites like Digg. So I guess the question is…

Is there really any point in digging your articles and blog posts?

Well my answer would be YES! Now would be the time more than ever to start building a Digg profile with great content. Digg have stated that they are adding “No Follow” tags to links they don’t trust. They have not yet explained exactly how they are measuring what they “trust” and what they don’t.

However, providing you Digg high quality unique content including content other than your own and get more active in the Digg community your links will become trusted.

When this happens the links from Digg will be more valuable to you than they ever were before.

At the end of the day it all boils down to what I always advise. Create high quality unique content, format your pages properly and use services such as Digg how they are supposed to be used.

Black hat techniques, tricks and systems will always catch up with you and could seriously hurt your business if you partake in them.

Please feel free to leave your comments and questions.

JP

I just thought I’d write a quick post to let you all know about a cool blog commenting system.

As you can see I’ve already added DISQUS to this blog after testing it out a little.

The trouble with the standard Wordpress comment system is that it’s just too boring!

DISQUS allows comment voting, commenting via twitter along with loads of other cool features. Personally I think it brings a little more community and discussion to the table.

A couple of the cool things I like about it are:-

Those who have DISQUS and Twitter accounts can automatically tweet the comments they leave.

Those with Seesmic accounts can record video comments for people to watch!

Facebook users can login with their Facebook details which will add their Facebook profile picture to the comment.

So if you’re running a blog you can grab DISQUS at www.disqus.com. Wordpress users can find it in the Wordpress plugins section at www.wordpress.org

Why not leave me a comment and let me know how it goes for you!

Speak soon
JP

The Firefox browser has just hit one billion downloads!

Well done guys! The Firefox browser created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross first launched on the 9th of November 2004 has just reached one BILLION downloads.

However the Firefox browser has been around a little longer than you might think and has come under various guises.

The Firefox browser was originally named Phoenix then Phoenix browser, Firebird, Firebird Browser and so on!

Safe to say the Firefox browser we have come to love so much has had more names than Liz Taylor!

Literally moments ago the Firefox counter twitter page at www.twitter.com/firefoxcounter updated to display over one billion downloads.

“1,000,019,496 downloads at 24.1 per second on 2009-07-31 15:00 UTC”

Well worth a blog post and a tweet I thought!

Well done FF

JP

Countdown timer scripts can be used in a variety of ways. For example you could countdown to a product launch or special offer or you could create a time limited special offer.

There are many countdown timer scripts floating around the internet but by far the best ones re-load or re- direct the visitor to another page when the countdown timer hit’s “0″.

For Example: A time limited offer page could count down to the expiry date and then display your normal sales page or a sorry offer closed page.

On the flip side for a special product launch you could count down until the launch date and then have the script load your sales page when the counter hits 0.

Also, wouldn’t it be nice if your countdown timer could keep track of your visitors so that when someone lands on your page the countdown starts and then continues for that particular person.

This way you could offer new subscribers to your newsletter a limited time only special offer.

Let’s say a visitor lands on your thank you page after subscribing to your newsletter and the countdown timer starts for that visitor on your thank you page.

Your email auto responders can now easily be synchronised with your thank you page eg: There’s just 7 more days left to grab your…..

The best part is the thank you page will also display the time they have left even if they visit the page in between emails.

If the visitor returns after the countdown timer hit’s 0 then the visitor can be directed to your normal sales page.

I’ve put together a free countdown timer script for you that does all of the above. You can use in any way you like.

You can download the script on the following page! BUT BE WARNED once you land on the page you’ll have just 14 days to download the script after that it will be gone for good

Click here to get the countdown timer script

Have fun

JP



I thought for my first video I would demonstrate the power of choosing the right domain name for your websites.

This I feel is overlooked by many people including web designers and design companies.

Enjoy the video and please feel free to leave any comments or questions.

JP

Print Page Button Script

There are many uses for using a Print Page Button for example you might want to give your website visitors the option to “Print Out” a mail order form.

Some visitors are still un easy about entering credit card information in online and rather than pass up on the sale why not give them the option to “Print Out” and post an order form.

Here’s how it’s done.

1) Create a page containing your mail order form.
2) Add the following code to the html where you want the “Print Button” to appear.

<form><input onclick="window.print();return false;"
type="button" value=" Print Page" /></form>

Here’s how it will look on your page:

Hey presto! You now have an online printable order form which people can mail in to you with a cheque.

Of course there maybe many other uses for a print button but this is just one example which could benefit your business and improve sales.

The print button code will work on any page you pace it on.

Thanks for listening

JP

PS, don’t forget to leave your comments and questions!

Hey, thanks for dropping by!

I’m Jon Stringer (friends call me JP!) and I’d like to give you a warm welcome to my brand new Web Design Tips website.

This site is all about giving you practical tips and tricks that you can use to improve your online business and I’m sure you’ll get loads of value from the tips, tricks and strategies I’ll be sharing with you over the coming weeks, months and years!

I’ll be posting regular video’s with how to demonstrations so that you can quickly and easily deploy and test the ideas that I’ll be sharing with you.

We’re just putting the finishing touches to the site and the “How to build a website from scratch in under 7 days DVD course”.

In the mean time you can stay up to date by registering for email updates on the top right hand side of this page and why not friend me up on Facebook or Twitter?

Also, to prove my point that I believe ANYONE can easily build a great website, some of my Facebook friends have asked me to scan in my school reports which I’ve recently come across.

So if you’d like to see them please leave a comment below. If there’s anything that’s been confusing you regarding web design please also feel free to leave a comment or get in touch via Facebook or Twitter.

Speak Soon
JP!